Christian Eckes emerges as dramatic winner of Kansas Lottery 200 NASCAR truck race

Even without a win in the first round of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck playoffs, Christian Eckes was assured of advancing to the Round of 8.

But an exhilarating win in the Kansas Lottery 200 elimination race on Friday night at Kansas Speedway made it extra special for Eckes.

Eckes, who hadn’t contended for the lead all night, emerged from a three-wide battle with Corey Heim and Zane Smith on the final two-lap restart after a caution. In a last-lap scramble that saw Smith get loose, turn sideways and fade to fifth, non-playoff driver Taylor Gray finished second, .363 seconds behind Eckes.

It was Eckes’ third win of the season in the No. 19 Chevrolet but just his first since Darlington on May 12.

“That was wild; I didn’t know if I was going to win it or not,” said Eckes, 22. “Right place, right time. That’s usually how these trucks restarts go. They’re always really tough, and you have to be in a good position twice to take the lead, and the last one stuck.

“We had like a sixth-place truck all day, but that caution coming out, I knew we had a shot at it, and here we are. We hadn’t won in a really long time. We wanted to set a tone.”

Eckes joined first-round winners Ty Majeski and Grant Enfinger as automatic qualifiers to the Round of 8 beginning next week at Bristol. The other five to advance were Heim, reigning series champ Smith, Carson Hocevar, Nick Sanchez and 2020 champion Ben Rhodes, despite a 25th-place finish on Friday night.

Rhodes’ ThorSport teammate Matt Crafton, a three-time series champion and three-time winner at Kansas, fought an ill-handling truck and was eliminated, falling short by 11 points with his 33rd-place finish.

Also trimmed from the field of 10 was former Cup regular Matt DiBenedetto, who faced a must-win situation but finished third and was five points behind the cut line.

Heim, who finished second in the May race at Kansas, and Hocevar, who finished second last fall, dueled in front of the field for much of the final 80 laps of the 134 lap-race, and were 1-2 after the final pit stop cycle with 30 laps to go. But four cautions during the last 26 laps set up the dramatic finish.

“I feel like every time we got up front, there was a caution,” said Heim, who finished fourth. “I can’t say enough about our speed tonight. Definitely an improvement from the first Kansas, and we were really fast then.”

While Eckes had not won a race in four months, he has been running well in recent weeks, posting a second at Indianapolis and third at Milwaukee in his previous two starts.

“We’ve been working really hard for this, and to have the Round of 10 go second-place, third-place and first, you can’t get much better than that,” said Eckes of Middletown, N.Y. “It solidifies what we knew all year, that we can run this well, and even throughout the droughts and not running great, we stuck together as a team and figured out how to get better.

“Even though today we were not the best truck, but we were good enough on a short run to contend for it.”

Indeed, there were better trucks in a race that saw 11 different leaders. Sanchez led a race-high 43 laps, Heim led 40 laps and Hocevar led 32.

Eckes led the only two laps that mattered.

Jennifer Jo Cobb of Kansas City, Kansas, made her first start of the season and finished 34th.